[OOC] From Stardust, To Stardust

[Apollo26]

aaaaaaaand posted

[null123]

LaXnyd said
Also, the Alarai have currently made contact with the Eternal Union and the Septonian Concordant, who are currently about to be engaged in what looks like a long and dirty war. Things are gonna get real awkward for them real fast.

The EU is pissed but not enough to pursue war. So the septonians would have to attafk more to make it a war. Combine that with the fact that the EU is about to enter a civil war.

[Apollo26]

You don't have to persue anything duck, the Concordant will bring the war to you

[null123]

For what reason?
A dead Captain?

There's really no reason for any war to occur at this point. The EU is willing to do peace.

[WilsonTurner]

duck55223 said
For what reason?A dead Captain?There's really no reason for any war to occur at this point. The EU is willing to do peace.

What
The
Shit

Oh my god
You're bombing, shooting down, and tearing apart Septonian units, and then you just go like "Well we're willing to do peace, so we don't have to have a war."

YOU FIRED THE FIRST GODDAMN SHOT, it's up to the OTHER side if they wanna peace or not.

Do you know how insanely arrogant you sound?

Lke
level: 1000

[null123]

Yeaaaaaaaaaaah.
And they totally didn't continue to move units after warning shots were fired, and then laughed at the Iscandarians attempts to establish communications.

Oh and I never used bombers on their ground troop.s

[WilsonTurner]

I'm not even going to respond to your stupid.

[ASTA]

Kyelin said
Ethereals have two main advantages: immortality and multi role ships. They aren't afraid to be 'killed'. And their ships are able to change roles. Their main disadvantages are the long wind up from FTL travel, making them vulnerable at arrival destinations, and the fragility of their ships, due to not caring about losses

I don't really take into account the weaknesses or strengths of my creations. These usually come into play if you design them well instead of trying to come up with arbitrary limitations. Instead, I dub strengths and weaknesses as 'attributes' of a character or a nation.

But, since Kyelin did it:

Depending on the load out of the craft, vul'kruun star crawlers basically carry enough dakka to effectively neutralize starships that outweigh them by dramatic margins---using only one nuclear shaped charge or a nuclear explosively-formed penetrator. In addition, they're ungodly fast (Orion drives and Nuclear Salt Water Rockets have high fuel efficiency and excellent thrust), they sometimes prove difficult to hit with guided munitions (the 'stutter' effect and the variable yield of the Orion's propellant charges gives star crawlers fitted with them irregular acceleration rates if so desired by their handlers), and they're wrapped in dense, composite armor (ablative layers, space armor configurations, electric-reactive armor, ect). Cold plasma shielding and ECM suites help as well.

Oddly enough, it only takes 12 vul'kruun to crew one of these, with all twelve crew members able to handle one with just four Earth weeks of training.

As for combat doctrine, they avoid spaceship battles and instead opt to appear unannounced within strike range of a lightly-defended xeno population center, cut loose with a few dozen high-capacity FTL-capable computer-controlled missile buses and then leave without a trace. If a xeno fleet is spotted, they usually turn tail and run away. Giant enemy starcraft (like all these dreadnoughts and battleships I keep seeing talked about in the IC) are killed using the 'net' method, which details abruptly surrounding the vessel with missile buses. Escape becomes unlikely, while point-defense is overwhelmed by the intelligent missile swarms (which permits them to concoct devious attack patterns and tactics as they make their way towards their target).

There's a bunch of other crap I left out, but that's about it. It should also be said that vul'kruun don't have captains or admirals or fleets. When you see a gang of their ships assaulting something or someone, that group formed as a response to the detection of suitable prey. I think I designated these groups as 'Murders'.

Fitting I suppose.

In other news, I finally got my computer back! Now I can post ICly here again!

[Kyelin]

Interesting... The Vul'Kruun are fitted for sudden strikes and raids. Seeing that makes me want to go in depth about the Ethereals (which I will do tonight or tomorrow on my weekend). Problem is, I only know of the basics of quantum mechanics. Hopefully I can make it semi realistic and consistent.

EDIT: Seeing as how power gaming and abuse of certain rules (which I think isn't such a big deal in a free roam NRP) is an issue for some, an outlining of certain technological and cultural traits and capabilities will prevent players from pulling pvp winning units or weapons out of ther ass. And, I personally am happy to share my ideas and creations with others (I think others would agree as well)

[WilsonTurner]

So you're ungodly fast, you can warp in and out quite quickly, you've got good, strong armor, you've got supersmart swarmer missiles...

So what are the cons? Besides them each being loners? Cause you're saying that you're really fast, you're hard to kill, you're hard to avoid getting killed by, and you can FTL in and out quickly. What balances it? Making them each loners is hardly a balancing act. They are smaller craft, I assume, and can be have a crew trained and ready to operate very very quickly.

Really, if something threatens, then your peoples could just band together out of fear for extinction, and it'd be impossible to beat you. Not without some really powerful laser weapons or other instantaneous types to disable before you can run away.

[Kyelin]

ASTA's overview was not an outlining of pros and cons regarding tech. It was attributes of it's species and a description of their technology, how it works, the resulting advantages and military doctrine. Not everything needs to be balanced, you just need to collab and decide on fair game and who wins where, if that's what you're worried about. You can't balance a free roam pure narrative NRP.

[ASTA]

WilsonTurner said
So you're ungodly fast, you can warp in and out quite quickly, you've got good, strong armor, you've got supersmart swarmer missiles...So what are the cons? Besides them each being loners? Cause you're saying that you're really fast, you're hard to kill, you're hard to avoid getting killed by, and you can FTL in and out quickly. What balances it? Making them each loners is hardly a balancing act. They are smaller craft, I assume, and can be have a crew trained and ready to operate very very quickly.Really, if something threatens, then your peoples could just band together out of fear for extinction, and it'd be impossible to beat you. Not without some really powerful laser weapons or other instantaneous types to disable before you can run away.

1) Never said anything about them being loners. If you see one star crawler, you can assume there will be more lurking about somewhere. Like their handlers, vul'kruun military spacecraft operate in moderately-sized packs to maximize effectiveness during the hunt. This elevates the level of missile spam, which mutually improves the odds of causing causalities to xeno scum.

2) Never mentioned the size of these ships. Not going to specify exact lengths, widths or mass either. You and Duck both have an infamous and rather vicious habit of power-creeping whenever you two are faced with something especially daunting. However, being based on Orion craft, they can range from large to huge in bodily dimensions and tonnage. You can't really do 'small' with an Orion drive, because the engineering limitations and characteristics intrinsic to the drive system itself do not scale down very well. NSWRs, however, can function relatively well when properly machined into petite forms and applied to minute-sized space vessels.

3) I wouldn't say the missiles are hyper-intelligent, but each one can effectively make decisions on its lonesome, and can receive information from its parent missile bus, another missile bus, its siblings and comrades, or other star crawlers. I don't see the problem, especially when you consider that vul'kruun starships practically command themselves in and outside of battle while digital intelligence constructs are not expensive for them to produce (though, since they mine planets and asteroids for raw material, nothing other than their FTL fuel is expensive nor difficult for them to create); the crew is just there to maintain the ship and to tell the on-board systems what to engage, what to monitor and what to avoid firing at.

4) They're already united. Not through any particular political or martial agenda, but through their own psychology and biological evolutionary traits. If you come to them with a promising deal of some sort that involves betraying their entire species, they're going to register you as a prey animal first and a sapient species second. And react in kind. Vul'kruun don't really fit in with the usual species present in the RP when it comes to alliances; they also do not follow the human psychological model in its entirety, and are guided more by aggressive primal impulses and bestial instincts rather than rational thought and cognitive reasoning.

5) I don't know what a laser is supposed to do. Could do some serious damage with a gamma ray laser or an x-ray laser though, but sufficient armor density, ablative layering, sections of 'water' armor, and sheer mass can nullify these weapons to a solid echelon. Plasma shields are a bit different; plasma shield density and other factors might come into play, but I'd have to do more research. I'm trying to keep the hard science to a very low level. And I'm bound to get some things wrong as well.

Cons? I don't know. Realistically, Orion drives might not be as fuel efficient as other drive/engine systems. They need to be refueled with propellant charges and pusher plates do need to be maintained and/or replaced. The fuel used in vul'kruun FTL drives, known as Mes, is expensive because it is a chore to manufacture even with particle accelerators constructed with the prime intention of producing it. Low ship 'endurance' perhaps? I don't know. Vul'kruun don't have artificial gravity, so they have to rotate crews out periodically to prevent space sickness and bone deterioration from setting in and causing hard-to-correct or irreversible damage to the crew members.

As I said, I don't fish around for weaknesses and strengths. I just go with what my shit can and cannot do, because I almost always crib it from real-life (with a few tweaks applied of course).

EDIT: The only real way to balance a free-form RP is to ban specific technologies. Time travel is an obvious one, but if I were GM, I'd forbid the use of:

Non-traditional artificial gravity

Wormholes

Railguns that can fire projectiles faster than 0.5 percent of c (and even this is pushing it)

Dyson technology

Magic

Magic-like technology, such as fields that can disrupt the strong or weak nuclear forces

And standard ship-borne FTL

[WilsonTurner]

Ah, I suppose you all are right.

How do I meet these vul'krum, anyhow?

[ASTA]

WilsonTurner said
Ah, I suppose you all are right.How do I meet these vul'krum, anyhow?

The M should be replaced with an additional U followed by a single N.

As for meeting them, they don't exactly have a set 'area' where they are (I haven't determined this yet honestly). For now, consider them a plot device. If I remember my last IC post, a small murder finished fighting the forces of some random NPC alien civilization, and is now in FTL transit. They could appear somewhere near a moon owned by your faction, but be wary of what I said when it comes to the vul'kruun and their way of interacting with aliens.

To retcon some things (and to make doing things with my nation easier), I'm going to say that it's not impossible to reason with them, but their longing to RIP AND TEAR and SLAUGHTER EVERYTHING really hampers negotiation possibilities. That and their language is less vocal and more about pheromones, subsonic noises and body language.

But when in doubt, hand-wave everything for the sake of plot is what I say.

[WilsonTurner]

The first-contact procedure dictates the use of binary to code the DNA of a plant that calms and pacifies of one who ingests. Would this not be a suitable way for saying "We don't mean to kill you"?

[Apollo26]

Well since everyone is detailing their capabilities, I think I should do so too

On the ground:

The Septonian military currently lacks any sort of armor ( Tanks, LAVs, etc…) but my infantry are heavily armed and extensively trained. When not fighting wars the military constantly trains, pitting battalion vs battalion in full scale training scenarios. Pretty much one division will invade the world of another division where they fight mock battles lasting anywhere from a day to a couple weeks. The benefit being, any dirty trick you might see out there some Aradite commander will probably do to you in training. They try to make training as realistic as possible even down to used sim-rounds that have the same ballistic properties as the actual rounds they fire and using riot control force shells to simulate explosives ( Pretty much just throws bodies around and makes a loud bang). The down side is that injuries are common in training but that benefits training for the corpsmen and medic’s. Lacking armor ( as it tanks etc) means I rely on my infantry heavily, which means I need to find other ways to launch offensives and hold ground. Stealth, Ambush tactics and fast offensives is the only way we can fight, usually using a combination of the three to tip the scales in our favor. A Septonian raid will usually happen in the dead of night or early in the morning. It will start as utter silence and then in an instant explode into terrifying hail of fire before we flood the area with air assault troops. Everything that moves and isn’t Aradite gets killed or at least shot at until it can be killed. City raids work on the same principle but last significantly longer based on the size of the city. I also rely heavily on air support from fighter bombers, fighters and gunships, we are adept at maneuver warfare. My infantry carries heavy and light rocket launchers for tanks and vehicles and SAMs for air forces. Of course the weaknesses here are if we get caught out in the open then we are pretty fucked, infantry no matter how armored or trained they are can be killed pretty easily in a shooting gallery. My special operations forces are extremely well trained as well, even more so then my regular line troops. They are trained for every possible contingency that the brass can think of, crazy things life in vacuum ship raids or long range asteroid field recon. Don’t be surprised if you see a 5 man team of Special forces jumps from asteroid to asteroid to get eyes on a ship or space station. They jump, dive and operate in the vacuum and are usually pulled from the best soldiers in marine and army battalions.

Weakness: There aren’t a lot of us, we live long and don’t reproduce much and it takes 18-20 years to train one soldier. Our training process is also dangerous, new graduates from military academies are thrown into combating feral beasts and beings on other worlds as a final training exercise. Everyone that survives is placed into an operational battalion and those who don’t before ever seeing the actual military.

In space: This is a big weakness for us, mainly because we have never faced another force in space. So we don’t know what to expect by ways of weapons. Most of my naval ships are outfitted for multi role combat and aren’t devoted just to space warfare. We have cannons for ship borne artillery and missiles for orbit to ground strikes, both can be used in space as well but there are not devoted to it. The only space devoted weapon we have is our Magnetically accelerated torpedo which is pretty much a torpedo accelerated to railgun speeds. Our navy is mainly used as an deployment platform and a support by fire tool, any devoted naval combat requires higher numbers or specialized tactics which are still under development. The exception here is my Blackhole class ship, which plays into the strengths of my current combat doctrine. The stealth systems on the Blackhole class are excellent, masking radar, thermal and EM signatures from outside sources. It can stalk what ever it wants and not be seen outside of a visual identification. The sensor package it carries is also extremely powerful, able to discern a wide spectrum of signatures and identify them, such as weapons discharges, FTL jumps and intercept radio transmissions.

Diplomatically : We love peace as much as the next guy and can be reasoned with, unless provoked or threatened. There isnt alot of us in one place at one time and we are EXTREMELY careful. If we smell the slightest hint of something going on or see something questionable we will react appropriately. Im not saying if you flinch we will start shooting up the place but if you start reaching for weapons or point weapons at my guys we will start taking action to raise our survivability chance. We are by nature a friendly people and very helpful but we are easy to spin up when people start calling for war, we are just nationalistic.

[Kyelin]

@apollo

Well, that explains why Duck made your men all antsy :S

[Apollo26]

I mean what would you do if you were surrounded with weapons pointed at you, had he just walked up and waved it would of been a completely different story. Now im not saying literally do that but something other then surround and point weapons would have yielded different results.

[WilsonTurner]

Apollo26 said
I mean what would you do if you were surrounded with weapons pointed at you, had he just walked up and waved it would of been a completely different story. Now im not saying literally do that but something other then surround and point weapons would have yielded different results.

AND he tried to blow the shit out of you for being like a turtle when a coyote comes around.

[null123]

WilsonTurner said
AND he tried to blow the shit out of you for being like a turtle when a coyote comes around.

No I blew the shit out of him for attempting to land troops without authorization. Which is what the Iscandarians call a invasion.